There are a lot of things in all of our environments to potentially worry about these days.

When I was 19 years old I learned how not to worry. I learned this quite by accident.

Up until then, I thought it was impossible not to worry. In fact, I had been taught that I should worry, because it would help me anticipate and solve problems.

At age 19, I was in college at the University of California. I had three jobs, in addition to going to school full time and trying to have some semblance of a social life.

I was juggling a lot and I was a habitual worrier about my jobs, homework and tests.

One day, when I was listening to my Mom, I realized that she was worrying about me constantly. It was practically a full time job for her.

Being the renegade smart mouth that I was at that age, I told her that she was doing enough worrying for both of us, so I no longer needed to worry. I could take that off my plate. It would be her job to do all the worrying that was necessary to keep me sane, safe, and solvent. She was already doing it anyway.

What followed totally astonished me. I just stopped worrying. Cold turkey.

Every time I caught myself starting to worry, I told myself that it was my Mom’s job to do my worrying, and that she was doing a splendid job of it, so I didn’t need to worry. She never seemed to mind having the job.

After I graduated from college and got married, my Mom worried for me.

When I moved to Chicago and got a job with a big multi-national bank, my Mom worried for me.

When I got divorced, my Mom worried for me.

When I was almost 40 years old, my Mom died. I addition to losing my Mom, I lost my professional worrier too.

So, I started worrying again.

It was unconscious at first, and then I realized I was doing it, and I began to wonder how I could stop worrying again. I knew it was possible. My Mom taught me that.

I attended a six-day intensive retreat with Jon Kabat-Zinn and learned to meditate. I had tried meditation off and on many times before, but it had never ’stuck.’

That week, we practiced different forms of meditation from when we woke up, at 6 a.m., to when we retired, at 10 p.m. I ‘got’ meditation in my bones. So much so, that I couldn’t live without it.

Now, any time I catch myself starting to worry, I meditate. When I start to get the 4 a.m. ‘weebie-jeebie’s,’ I lie in my bed and meditate.

Meditation helps me feel what I know, deeply in myself: that everything I need is given to me at all times, and that I just need to be available: receptive, responsive, and creative.

Meditation is the ability, the practice, and the skill, to breathe into the infinite and timeless Presence that is my Center, the well from which wisdom and truth arise. In that Center, there is no worry.

Filed under: Being a Reinventer, Adventures of a Reinventer, Lynne's Reinvention Journey on February 13th, 2009